


A (Praxan) Ghost Story

by dragonofdispair



Series: Across the Great Divide [8]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Action, Aftercare, Alternate Universe, Angst, BDSM themes, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Fluff, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Rebel Groups, Sabotage, Safewords, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, anniversarychallenge16, spark interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:52:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7864618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of the Decepticons’ attack on their city, approximately three hundred mechs were pulled from the ruins of Praxus. In grief, they swore vengeance, stripped away their color, and became Ghosts. They will kill and die for those already dead, but they live for each other. </p><p>None more so than Prowl and Jazz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [anniversarychallenge16](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/anniversarychallenge16) collection. 



> This takes place in my _Across the Great Divide_ ‘verse. For anyone unfamiliar with the rest of the series: Prowl has a glitch that makes casual touch painful, and Jazz is related to the Praxan branch of the Polyhexian mob. This installment takes place several vorns after the seventh chapter of _Crux_. Jazz, Prowl, and the other survivors of the Decepticon attack on Praxus are operating independently from the Autobots, mostly as terrorists, raiders, and smugglers. 
> 
> Written for the 2016 ProwlxJazz Livejournal Anniversary Challenge. It kinda… grew on me. The first chapter was written for the prompt “Lives of a Cat” and the third for “Am I My Brother’s Keeper”. They were _supposed_ to be separate stories. Then plot happened and they became chapters in the same story. I’m trying to write a second story for “Am I My Brother’s Keeper” but meanwhile, enjoy the multi-chapter, and see if you can spot the nines in each chapter.
> 
> Beta’d by 12drakon

.

.

“The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.” - Henry A. Kissinger

.

.

.

“Prowl,” Jazz liked to think his nervousness wasn’t perfectly obvious. He was a smooth, suave operator. He was  _ feared _ by Decepticons!  _ He _ was the reason Megatron’s minions jumped at shadows. His silent footsteps heralded explosions that lit up the night sky. He laughed while supply lines, bases, infrastructure Megatron had thought unassailable disintegrated into shrapnel and ashes. 

But the Decepticons had come a long way since those first, desperate raids the (then-unnamed) Ghosts had undertaken. Soundwave, the mech in charge of security and counter intelligence, was not a stupid mech. He couldn’t find the tunnels the Ghosts used to shelter and travel freely — the secrets of so many millennia were not so easily discovered — but he could and did secure the Ghosts’ targets. No security hole was viable twice. If it looked like it was, then it was a trap. That was the sort of mech Soundwave was.

The Prime didn’t approve of the risk the Ghosts took. He didn’t approve of their methods. But he didn’t have to. Polyhex had a long history of disregarding the Primes’ edicts, and Jazz didn’t answer to him in this war. Not that the Prime objected too loudly most of the time; he wasn’t  _ that _ much a hypocrite. Using Jazz’s Family to ferry his relief packages into Polyhex didn’t leave him much moral high ground to stand on.

Right now Jazz wasn’t the nightmare the Decepticons feared above all else; he was a mech trapped in a closing security net with a countdown of kliks on his HUD telling him just how long before everything in a megamile’s radius would be turned to ash and slag and a gorgeous crater visible from space. Prowl could tell. Prowl could always tell when Jazz wasn’t feeling as confident as he projected.

Bonds were helpful like that. Jazz knew it — he’d been living with a bond to Ricochet since they’d been sparked — and didn’t try  _ too _ hard to deceive his lover.

“What do you need, Jazz?” The infiltrator had to stop a snicker-snort from escaping his vocalizer. Prowl sounded almost  _ bored. _

If Jazz was the nightmare, Prowl truly was the ghost that haunted Decepticon footsteps. His shadow rarely graced the same halls as Megatron’s minions. He didn’t announce his presence with explosions powerful enough to turn everything nearby into molten metal and glass. His was the more silent, more deadly presence on the battlefield. He was the processor and the will behind the Ghosts’ success. His signature was stolen data, collapsed communications, and the complete annihilation of Decepticon supplies and defenses at the worst possible times. He was the quizzical looks on Autobot faces when expected Decepticon resistance faded like mist, clearing the battlefield before combat could even be joined. Prisoners spirited away in the night. Decepticon targets that were surrounded, cut off, and running low on everything, rescued between one rain of bullets and the next. Cybertron salted and burned not before the Decepticon advance, but under their very treads… All without any of them ever having seen the creature they feared. 

Prowl was the reason they were still alive. Which was the reason Jazz wasn’t despairing just yet. “Could really use an extraction.”

“Really? I thought you said you were handling this one yourself.”

“Pure bravado,” Jazz answered without shame. “Lies. You know I couldn’t do any’a this without you.”

“Hmmm…” Prowls voice was thoughtful, as though considering whether it was worth forgiving Jazz his hubris. But Jazz could  _ feel _ the calculations and considerations that whirred through that processor so hard they flickered through his spark and into Jazz’s. Accordingly, Jazz changed direction. He was in a bad position for his lover; it would be easier if he was just a few halls north. “And what sort of apology should I expect should I do as you ask?”

“Oh you know me.” Comms weren’t  _ quite _ superfluous. Their bond wasn’t  _ that _ strong. But practice had its purpose. So did pre-planning, and they  _ had _ made some basic plans on how to get Jazz out of the base if it started falling apart. “Only the best engex. Crystal bouquets. Night on the town. Prime’s ballroom even. Whole nine yards.”

“That does sound attractive.” Too bad it wasn’t ever happening. Jazz owed Prowl a proper apology, true, but fantasies of their pre-war dates were just that: fantasies. “The next room is supercomputers and has a tiled floor. You should be able to get under it and hide there until the search party passes.”

Jazz didn’t bother protesting, even though he knew the Decepticon search party would lock the door behind them when they checked this room. Prowl wouldn’t send him in there unless there was a way out. For fun he stuck a handful of microgrenades on the computers as he passed. He pried up the floor and slid into the cool, cramped space beneath it.

“Good,” Prowl whispered, with the same voice he used while Jazz writhed, clawing at his lover’s plating in ecstasy. Jazz shivered. “When you hear the search party, set off the grenades.”

“What were you going to have me do if I hadn’t booby-trapped the computers?”

“Jazz…” And  _ that _ was the same chiding voice Prowl used while telling him what a  _ very bad mech _ he’d been and  _ bad mechs got  _ **_arrested._ ** Again, Jazz had to suppress a snicker. Jazz and Prowl flirted on the job; it was a fact. It just… The Ghosts jeered and cheered and laughed as appropriate. Autobot comms analysts just shook their heads in bafflement. Soundwave nearly fritzed. Seriously — they had a much-watched, much-loved, stolen security vid of sparks coming from the mech’s helm when he finally managed to decrypt some of the Ghosts’ communications, only to be treated to a joor of raunchy comments and various berth-room voices. Comm-sex right in the middle of an op. “There is no simulation in which you leave those computers intact. If I send you into a computer room, you’re going to find some way to blow it up. It is simply a fact. Do so when you hear the search party enter the room.”

Mech had a point.

So Jazz listened for the search parties he was hiding from. When heard their voices as they opened the computer room and started their sweep, he clapped his hands over his sensor horns and triggered the grenades.

_ Pop! Pop! Poppity-pop! BOOM! _

It was all he could do not to burst out in maniacal laughter at the sudden shouts of alarm as the mechs took cover. Chaos, panic, disorder… Jazz would love to say his work was done, but this was just the pay-per-preview. Special feature of the night was something else entirely.

Panic ensued. Medics were called for. Jazz listened as silent as the ghost he was, all the while counting down the kliks until the much, much bigger boom still to come. Prowl had a plan; Jazz had to trust his mate.

“Now,” Prowl commanded. With no thought or doubt, just pure  _ reaction _ to the command, Jazz flipped the floor-panel up and bolted through the chaos. He cleared the door before any of the mechs or medics could react. He reached out to use the doorframe to take the corner without slowing, then folded down into alt form. 

He had a klik to quip, “This ain’t exactly the quiet escape I was hoping for,” before he had Decepticons on his tail. He had the base’s blueprints in his processor, and Prowl fed him the route he was to follow. He dodged and wove and sent them reeling with a blast of sound from his rear-speakers. 

“You don’t have time for a quiet escape.”

“Too true. Hope you’ve gotta plan how to deal with the fact the door you’re sending me to s’all locked up tight.”

“I think you owe me a second bottle of engex for doubting me.”

Jazz didn’t answer; he hit the gas and raced toward the certain crash into a  _ very _ solid door awaiting him at the end of the corridor. And the two guards, of course, but at this speed being shot wasn’t nearly as much a concern as crashing.

“Sensors off please.”

Trustingly Jazz did so and didn’t even slow as he careened towards his inevitable future as a road-pancake.

**_Boom!_ **

The door turned to shrapnel and fire and light. Jazz drove blindly into the firestorm.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starts to earn that M rating this chapter with some sex to add to the violence.

“Welcome back to the manor!” Bluestreak called out cheerfully. That joke never got old. Their base, primitive as it was, still fit the Polyhexian definition of a manor: the Family Sire’s residence. So everyone — the Ghosts themselves, their contacts in both Iacon and Polyhex, anyone gossiping about their exploits — called it that. It had given Soundwave conniptions. He spent _vorns_ searching for an actual _manor_ as the location of the Ghosts’ manor.

In a group like the Ghosts of Praxus, compartmentalization of information wasn’t even a concept. Occasionally, Prowl implemented a _need to know_ where the only person who needed to know was him, but hiding that Jazz had been out on a mission wasn’t an option. And Jazz wasn’t even the only one. Everyone knew that Snowflake was out stealing Decepticon info and scouting. Rapidsong and Spear were also out, physically splicing backdoors into the Decepticon data lines; against that, Soundwave’s firewalls were of only limited use. Ricochet and Smokescreen and all of the Ghosts’ cargo-hauler alts were transporting another shipment of energon and weapons from Iacon to Polyhex. They all knew Jazz had been gone, if not exactly where, and they all knew when he returned.

The Ghosts — Jazz’s new _Family_ — was less than two hundred mechs and femmes in total. Probably less than seventy were currently here and not on their own missions. He knew them as well as he knew the family he’d been sparked to (much to Soundwave’s chagrin, as potential infiltrators were caught before they could even introduce themselves). He put names to the faces as they clustered around him to welcome him back, then zipped off to help with the usual after-mission festivities. Those who had been sparked into Praxan frames were a bit more standoffish than those in Polyhexian frames, but it was only habit now. Personal space was a thing of the past.

Except Prowl’s.

Which was why Prowl hung back until most of the others flitted off.

The last stragglers found someplace else to be as Prowl finally stepped up.

Occasionally the Ghosts had a refugee or rescued POW that stayed with them until he could be dropped off in Iacon. These mechs always reported to the Prime that the Ghosts seemed to fear Prowl. That was nothing but slag; but the Ghosts were amazingly close-mouthed about why they didn’t crowd their “leader” the way they did their comrades. It was pure respect. Keeping Prowl’s glitch under wraps had proven entirely impossible in the nest of gossip and bodies all piled together like turbodogs for warmth in the cold tunnels, while Prowl stayed separate, alone. Mechs saw and they talked and eventually Jazz and Prowl had come clean to their Family as to why Prowl couldn’t engage in casual touch. Fear didn’t come into it. If Prowl had more of their scavenged blankets than any other, well, it wasn’t because he commandeered them; it was harder to keep warm when he couldn’t even cuddle up next to the nearest warm body. When Prowl stepped up, Ghosts scurried respectfully out of his way, careful not to come in plating contact as they left the two bondmates alone.

Even paint stripped down to bare metal (not that the light was bright enough for color to make much of a difference), scratched, and grimy as the Pit, Prowl was still the most gorgeous mech Jazz had ever met. And, hey, it wasn’t like Jazz’s paint was any better. Primer — _death_ — grey was a sort of uniform among the Ghosts.

Jazz grinned, “Honey, I’m home.”

“You deviated from the plan.” Which was Prowl-speak for, _Stop being so Primus-damned reckless I love you you idiot_ , and Jazz grinned wider.

“Found the perfect romantic gift. Couldn’t just leave it behind t’get turned to slag with the rest of the base.”

If they’d been members of the Polyhexian military or, Primus-forbid, _Autobots,_ this would be the part where Prowl, as the superior officer, would start berating him for deviating for a _gift._

They weren’t though. They weren’t civilians, but they weren't precisely military either. The Decepticons called them _terrorists_ (to which the Ghosts just responded that _they_ weren’t the ones slagging entire cities on a megalomaniac’s whim) and Polyhex called them _freedom fighters_ . Which of those the Autobots called them depended on how much they’d pissed off the Prime with their ruthless tactics this decaorn. Prowl wasn’t Jazz’s superior — if they were being technical about it, _Jazz_ was the Family Sire and thus the superior, but the Ghosts didn’t really pay much attention to such things. Prowl was the better strategist and planner, so they followed his orders. Mostly.

Prowl just gave Jazz a bland look and asked, “Is this the sort of gift you want to give me now or during the festivities?”

“Oh _definitely_ during the festivities. I’ve got another sorta gift I wanna give you now.”

“Really? Is this the part where you serve me engex and treats, and give me bouquets of fresh crystals while we dance in the Prime’s own ballroom, as apology for daring to doubt me?”

“Exactly that.” And Jazz leaned in to kiss his mate on the lips. No more than a soft peck, before pausing. “Two words?”

“Green, Helium.”

 _Perfect._ The next kiss was much more… thorough.

Jazz didn’t stay in charge of this seduction very long at all. He ended up on one of the Ghosts’ few cots in medical, hands cuffed behind his back, the plating of his aft and thighs deliciously raw from the spanking he’d gotten, with Prowl fragging him mercilessly with a false-spike that they’d scavenged from somewhere Jazz definitely couldn’t remember right now.

He _did_ remember it was meant for a frame-class slightly larger than either of them. It took _prep_ for Jazz to take its girth without bending his calipers. Even after his third overload, it was the sort of pleasure that was also pain to feel it slamming into him over and over. He wanted to claw at the berth, shred the meager bedding beneath him or at least _thrash_ around a bit, but Prowl held him down while overload after overload shed sparks from his frame in purple sheets. Prowl’s words blurred together into a forceful growl and his own into a howled litany of _yesyesyesyes, ohPrimus, PROWL!_

Prowl didn’t let up until Jazz collapsed, spent and twitching. The dildo fell limply to the cot between them as it was released from the magnetic attachment on Prowl’s leg, the mech himself laying down next to his lover. Before releasing the cuffs, he softly he petted the sore plating of Jazz’s aft; Jazz mewled in appreciation.

Primus, he wished he could reciprocate.

Even now Prowl had to pull back from Jazz after a just few kliks taken to soothe them both. Then he bundled Jazz in every bit of scavenged cloth he could grab, whether it belonged to him or not, to see Jazz through the temperature crash. It was only when Jazz’s plating was safely tucked away, untouchable, that Prowl settled more firmly down to lend his own heat to Jazz’s systems.

Prowl insisted this was fine, more than fine, it wasn’t really the interfacing that was important but the closeness, which he got by indulging Jazz, but Jazz knew that for the lie it was. He could feel his lover’s frustration. He could feel it where their sparks blended and flowed into one another even without touching. He could feel it flicker oh-so-rarely into his field when Prowl couldn’t hold it back any longer. Pit, he could feel it in how _desperate_ Prowl was to frag Jazz through the berth with the dildo, as though he could get what he needed from whatever echoed of Jazz’s overloads through the bond. But it wasn’t the _overload_ Prowl missed. Sex was the means, not the end. Prowl could only really tolerate the touch he craved while he was being spiked, but recovery from overload was so arduous that they couldn’t take the time or spare the resources to indulge him.

There was no hiding that interfacing like this was unsatisfying for Prowl, which meant that it was unsatisfying for Jazz; no sheer number of overloads could make up for that. But there was nothing either of them could do, so Prowl fragged Jazz to within an inch of his life and pretended it was enough.

Jazz pretended too, because admitting it would simply be too painful for Prowl.

Jazz peeked out of his blanket-cocoon to watch the activity of their makeshift medbay. Completely ignoring their two leaders fragging, their medic, Firefly, and his single nurse both tended to the two actual patients. A Praxan technician fiddled with a bit of medical equipment they hadn’t quite managed to get working right since they’d found it, but hadn’t given up on. His mate chatted to him, handing him tools when he asked for them. In another cot, a trine of Ghosts slept right through the racket Jazz had made.

He chuckled.

“Hmm?...” Prowl said.

“Nine people in this room, besides us, and you ain’t even embarrassed ‘bout fragging me through the cot.”

Prowl’s engine coughed, his field flaring suddenly from _mostly calm/almost satiated_ to _absolutely mortified._ “Well I _wasn’t,_ but then you reminded me.”

“Aww… there’s those prudish Praxan sensibilities.” Jazz laughed.

“At least it isn’t the sidewalk.” Prowl buried his face in the folds of the blankets keeping Jazz’s temperature crash in check. Even through the layers of metal-mesh Jazz could feel his lover’s heat-blush.

“Hey,” Jazz soothed. “I’m sorry… It’s just. It’s amazing how we’ve come together, is all. Ain’t got a lotta privacy here and it woulda been so easy for some of you wing-backs,” he said the old slur-word he’d never actually uttered before the Fall with affection, “t’bail and go join the Autobots where they actually got rooms and such for this sorta thing. But you ain’t letting it stop you, and Wirestrip and Melody,” the technician and his mate looked up at the sound of their names but quickly went back to their task when it was clear Jazz wasn’t talking to them, “don’t even care anymore.”

“We might be the Ghosts of Praxus, but we’re all more Polyhexian now,” Prowl said quietly.

It was true. They’d all adapted to the tunnels and the perpetual darkness. Polyhexians could see in infrared, but there just weren’t enough supplemental visors to outfit all the Praxans. To save energy for more important things — like the overtaxed alarm system — they still kept the lights as low as possible. Even those without visor attachments adapted to the dark. The lack of privacy, lack of truly personal possessions, and the determination of everyone to treat everyone else as kin… Like Prowl said. They were all more Polyhexian now.

Jazz listened to Firefly say a prayer to Primus for the health of his patient, a quick murmured thing he nevertheless would never have bothered with before. Polyhexians, religious as they were, didn’t pray for each other. “Except those of us who are just a little more Praxan.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Alright! Femmes and gentlemechs! Let’s get this post-mission party  _ started!” _

Jazz’s announcement was met with cheers and raised cubes and other assorted drinking vessels. Party didn’t mean a let up on rationing at all, but that didn’t stop them from toasting their midgrade of dubious provenance like they were all sipping fizzy highgrade from fluted crystal goblets.

Grinning, Jazz strummed the first chord across the single sitar he’d had in his subspace when Praxus had fallen. It was missing a string now, but it was better than no music at all. Mechs cheered. The speakers fizzed and popped, and wear and tear on the wires made the volume way too low, but no one cared. It was time to party.

Jazz lost himself in the music as he danced, the power cord for the sitar twirling around him as he strummed out one of his old songs.

Later, when everyone’s rations had been consumed, and all the dancers had given up, and mechs just sat and swayed to Jazz’s music, Prowl brought it all to a stop by yanking out the sitar’s power cord mid-song. Everyone groaned theatrically, but under the mock disappointment their fields surged with excitement. 

“I apologize for interrupting,” Prowl said gravely, glaring at one mech who’d dared to throw his empty cube at the stage-stealer. It didn’t come anywhere near hitting Prowl, of course. Chasing Prowl off the stage wasn’t the point; jeering at him and pretending he was ruining their fun was, but those cubes were as valuable to the Ghosts as weapons; breaking one was  _ not allowed. _ “But,” he continued when the mech was properly cowed, “I do believe that Jazz needs to be debriefed.”

“Come on, Prowl,” Jazz whined playfully, right on script, “I went, I saw, I blew everything up… What’s more to debrief? Ain’t no reason to interrupt a perfectly good party.”

“Maybe,” Prowl drawled with an amused twitch of his doorwings that had the Ghosts — all of whom knew how to interpret doorwings as well as if they all had the things — tittering and laughing. Prowl was off-script! “We should start with why you deviated from your planned escape route for a personal gift.”

The Ghosts howled with laughter. Dimm red heat-lamps gleamed orange off a sea of primer grey sensor horns and doorwings as they enjoyed the “drama” of Jazz’s after-action “debriefing”. Debriefings were for armies with paperwork, not the Ghosts!

“Hear that, mechs and femmes — Prowl just wants his gift!” Jazz crowed, making an expansive gesture that ended with a  _ thrum! _ across the strings of his sitar that could be heard even without power. “What do you say I give it to him here and now?”

A chorus of  _ “Yes!” _ echoed off the walls of the cavern.

“Looks like you’re outvoted,” Jazz gloated to Prowl’s mock-peeved expression. “Gonna  _ debrief,” _ Jazz growled in a way that had every mech in the room substituting the word  _ sex _ in the privacy of their own processors, “right here.”

Prowl just crossed his arms over his very gorgeous chest. He was much better at hiding his amusement than Jazz was. Despite that twitch of his doorwings, none of it leaked into his EM field. Impatiently, he made a “carry on” gesture with one doorwing, which sent another wave of snickers through their audience.

“So… How I got off-route and the whole ‘Con base hunting for me when my wonderful, gorgeous, marvelous, magnificent, lovely, delightful, patient, pleasant, splendid, spectacular, impressive, striking, majestic,” here Prowl raised one optic ridge, a sense of  _ oh really? _ flickering through their bond, “awesome, breathtaking —”

“Get on with the fragging story!” Nightmix yelled impatiently and was shushed. 

“Stunning, staggering, amazing, astounding… and definitely  _ stirring,” _ Jazz ended with a purr, “mate had me set up for the smoothest mission I could imagine? Well there I was, making my way down the hallway from where I’d hidden the bomb, about to crawl into the air vents, and then what did I see over my link with the cameras? The  _ base commander _ going out of his quarters on an errand and leaving his door  _ open. _ I  _ had _ t’make a detour and take a looksee. You can’t expect a mech like me t’pass that up, can you? ”

“No!” Everyone called out. Prowl didn’t even try and answer.

“Of course not!” Jazz swayed to a silent beat as he pranced over to where his mate waited, playing his part. “You wouldn’t love me if I were th’sorta mech who could.”

“Love is debatable right now,” Prowl said dryly and the Ghosts  _ booed _ at him.

“Well, maybe you’ll change your mind when you take a gander at these!” And with a flourish Jazz grabbed his mate’s hands and deposited a rather large stack of disks and datapads in them. Prowl’s optics went wide, doorwings flaring out, before he controlled his surprise. He’d expected Jazz to have something worth almost getting caught, but this was just more than he’d expected. Jazz could feel Prowl almost drool at the sealed cases that were mixed into the rest, and their  _ Classified Communications _ stamps. Jazz preened. He done good!

“Alright,” and Jazz could feel how hard it was for Prowl to stick to the script and sound disappointed when he really was impressed, “I suppose I can forgive you blowing your cover and almost getting killed for these.”

Jazz preened again.

“What else did you bring back?”

And that was the cue for everyone to surge forward eagerly as Prowl stepped back, subspacing the data for him and Slipwire and Blackburst to go over and decrypt later. 

Jazz danced back, away from the crowd of eager mechs, holding out his sitar like a Family enforcers’ baton to ward them off. “Mechs. Mechs! Just be patient! Calm down.” He was laughing though. “I can’t show you all the wonderful things if you crowd me. Mechs!”

He led them on a merry chase around the room and ended up standing precariously on one of the speakers, looking down at their expectant visors and optics. He grinned. “That’s more like it. Ah!” he scolded Starbeat as she reached up and grabbed at his leg armor, “You unbalance me and I fall over and the only one gettin’ anything is Firefly!”

“First up,” he called, reaching into his subspace, “is… an empty bottle!” He tossed it in the general direction of their nominal quartermaster. It’d get turned into a primitive explosive using some contaminated energon and a rag or an energon container for edible fuel, whichever the Ghosts needed more. “Next...” He pulled it out and boggled at it. “An energon sword?” 

His own confusion got a wave of laughter, but Jazz didn’t care. How the  _ frag _ could he not notice picking  _ that _ up?

Jazz was a kleptomaniac. For a while, he’d been a lapsed kleptomaniac, since he was living legal in Praxus. Now his tendency to pick up other people’s property and squirrel it away, often without even noticing he was doing it, was a source of endless amusement to the Ghosts. They didn’t have the strictest sense of personal property, anyway. Footlockers, subspace pockets, rationed energon — those were private. Anything else was free for anyone to take and use and leave out for the next person. So no one got offended when Jazz emptied his subspace and found he’d “accidently” picked up someone’s heavily defaced Decepticon recruitment poster or other thing someone _had been_ _looking for that forever._

And then there was this strange sort of lottery whenever Jazz got back from a mission. Inevitably he picked up a subspace full of junk from the Decepticons; any sort of leisure item was in high demand among the Ghosts. Sometimes he even picked up weapons or disks or zip drives or other little bits of intel no one could have, in a million years, actually planned on finding, so even Prowl-now encouraged this. (Where, if Jazz had been doing this while still in Praxus, Prowl-the-police-officer would have had him in cuffs before Jazz would have been able to stammer out that first request for a date.) 

Plus it kept up morale.

Jazz shook off his surprise. “So who needs a new energon sword?” Hands went up. “Hmmm…” he said. “That’s a lot. Maybe we should settle this with gladiatorial combat!”

Which of course was nothing of the sort. What it  _ really _ was, was a series of increasingly mocking, insulting and hilarious Megatron impressions, sometimes with other mechs joining in as Starscream or Soundwave or other infamous Decepticons. The contest was judged by popular vote: the louder the other Ghosts clapped, cheered and stomped their approval, the more votes a “gladiator” had. Jazz nearly fell off his speaker laughing as he handed the sword over to the winner.

“Next up! We have a crystal necklace!” he held it aloft and considered who he’d give it to. He was tempted to give this little bit to Prowl, since it looked like genuine, pre-war Praxan crystal-crafting. But Prowl wasn’t the jewelry type. “Wirestrip!” he finally called and the mech was shoved to the front of the crowd. Jazz put the necklace in the technician’s hands. “You got an anniversary coming up. Here you go: prezzie for your beau.” Mechs cheered as Wirestrip tried to stammer out an expression of thanks.

A pair of stasis cuffs went to Firefly, who doubled as the Ghosts’ prison warden on the very rare occasion they took a prisoner and strapped them to a cot in medical, because they didn’t exactly have a brig. Mostly they didn’t bother, and just slit the energon lines of survivors instead. A stylus got tossed at Slipwire and hit him the chevron, because he hadn't been paying close enough attention to catch it. A laser pointer got thrown into the crowd like bait among sharkticons; Jazz didn’t see who caught it. Ditto for a spool of string, but Backstreet cackled so loud it was obvious he was already planning his next spat of string-based pranks. 

“And last, but not least! A… drumroll please!” Immediately, the cavern filled with the cacophony of sixty-plus mechs all banging on the nearest surface to create a spark-quickening rhythm. “A game cartridge! KaonKart 3!” Which was a Decepticon-produced racing game.  _ Combat _ racing, of course. It only had three things going for it as far as the Ghosts were concerned. It was actually challenging enough to be entertaining, and it allowed them to smash the little Megatron character into the track’s walls or drop him off cliffs over and over again. And — “Just in time to replace the last one!” — it was common enough that they almost always had at least one copy, no matter how many of them they trashed.

He tossed the video game into the crowd and it was caught with a shout of, “TOURNAMENT TIME!”

The vid-game enthusiasts among them raced to the bit of tunnel where the Ghosts kept their dying holo screen. The others dispersed — mostly to sleep, curled up together on scavenged blankets.

“Only eight items,” Prowl murmured as Jazz sauntered over to where he was waiting, “You’re slipping.”

“Nine items,” Jazz corrected, making one last flourish that ended with the soft, organic-fiber blanket wrapped around his mate. “This was also in the commander’s quarters, and I just couldn’t let it go boom with th’rest of everything. But it took up most of my extra space.”

Prowl patted the blanket a few times. He’d had two of these in Praxus: one he’d scraped and saved for and managed to buy himself, and the other Jazz had bought, noticing how the texture soothed him, even when his glitch turned  _ everything _ touching him into pain. Both blankets had burned with the spires and towers. This was the first potential replacement Jazz had seen. Imported off-world fibers had never exactly been common, and war had only increased their rarity. Prowl was speechless; his engine coughed, as if trying to express… everything. Jazz shushed him, holding his finger up to his mate’s lips and almost touching.


	4. Chapter 4

No rest for the wicked. Prowl and the other cryptanalysis mechs tackled the stolen data, racing against time to decrypt and correlate and verify the information before it became obsolete. Jazz got hauled out to a nearby tunnel by one of the Family engineers.

Above the Ghosts’ current chosen residence-tunnels sat a now-bombed out Autobot base. They’d picked it because enough of the base’s subterranean electrical system was still functional that the Ghosts had been able to hook up their own generators and equipment without unpacking and laying the kels and kels of cables they’d need otherwise. As valuable as the generators themselves, those cables took a  _ frag-ton _ of time to coil back up and pack when the Ghosts needed to bug out. Using the remains of a city’s, or Autobot (or even Decepticon) base’s electrical system cut their evacuation time in half.

There were disadvantages to that strategy, though, and this was one of them.

“Frag,” Jazz said, surveying the damage.

“Agreed,” said Frosthaul. The Family engineer had been shoring up, repairing, and otherwise maintaining the smugglers’ tunnels since he’d been transferred to his adult frame, almost three centuries before the war broke out. Grey like the other Ghosts, he was a large, heavy Polyhexian civilian frame, which meant he was still barely larger than Prowl. Polyhexian underground-adaptive frame design went further than just infrared sight and good audio sensors for echo-mapping. Even their heaviest mechs tended towards the smaller end of the scale. “It looks like one or more of the plasma mines got set off, probably by a turborat, and cracked part of the tunnel’s support. After that it was only a matter of time before the rain got to it.”

“Right.” Collapse did mean any more mines in this section would have been set off already. Safe, as long as they didn’t shift any load-bearing debris. Jazz leapt up on one sturdy-looking I-beam that stuck out of the pile and looked up. Right from the tunnel to the night sky. Frag, frag, frag… “Any way to clear this?”

“No. Best thing we can do is collapse enough of the tunnel on either side to conceal the entrances. Plug them with surface debris.”

“Do it,” Jazz ordered. More than the secrecy of the tunnels being sacred, now the very survival of the Ghosts and of Polyhex depended on it. If the Decepticons found the tunnels and learned to navigate them, the guerrilas were all dead. No more grey ghosts to haunt Megatron and his minions. The Ghosts, the smugglers,  _ Polyhex itself _ were all dead. “Scavenge everything y’can, then hide it all.”

He started to jump down and nearly fell when he changed his mind right before he left the I-beam. He ended up clinging, upside-down, looking at the thing that had caught his attention.

“Jazz?” Frosthaul called. 

“Yeah,” Jazz wrapped his legs more securely around the I-beam then let go with his hands. Hanging there, he twisted to point. “Start with that.”

The hardest part was hiding it from Prowl, even with all the Ghosts running interference. Mech was scary smart. 

Fortunately, the collapsed building and the information Jazz’s spur-of-the-moment detour had netted them kept him busy enough. Decepticons burned, while Prowl also oversaw the distribution of the collapsed-building finds. It had been an Autobot barracks, complete with washrack, so there was a lot of solvents, soaps and polishes to distribute, towels to divvy up, more blankets to appropriate. Most of the berths were complete slag, but they did manage to salvage three, bringing the number of cots in the medbay up to a total of nine.

And then there were the Autobot soldiers’ personal items that had survived. They found three more vid-games, which made a total of four to choose from until they were played to destruction. Bookfiles got added to their communal library shelf. Weapons — small, personal, arms — and the ammo to go with them were almost a reason to celebrate in itself. 

Praxan-framed Ghosts claimed battery-operated visible-spectrum lamps almost before the crate’s lid could be opened. Their morale soared as the residents of the manor spent almost a decaorn in tunnels as brightly lit as daylight before the batteries started running down, and the lamps were tossed into the parts bins with the other wires and circuits and odds and ends that  _ could _ be used to repair other things.

The biggest find was a generator, only slightly banged up.  _ That _ was a reason to celebrate, as the tech-inclined Ghosts rewired their tunnels’ electrical net to put the medbay on its own power system.

Finding enough cleanser to fill it required a dangerous topside journey through the minefield to find and siphon the Autobots’ tank of ‘racks cleanser. Jazz nearly stepped on a mine and ended falling off a building instead. It had only been quick thinking by Sureway with a tarp that kept Prowl from seeing the cleanser when he stormed into the medbay to give Jazz a piece of his processor for being so reckless. Jazz made sure to look (and feel!) properly chagrined.

But deep inside, the almost imperceptible sound of cleanser sloshing and electronics humming away under the tarp made his spark soar.

It was a while, and another mission, before he had the chance to take advantage of it.

“Come on, love,” Jazz wheedled as he guided Prowl down the corridor. There were fewer Ghosts right now than there usually were. They were out, taking advantage of the intel. Spying, theft, sabotage, rescue missions… Prowl had their data-threads running through his mind and had just confirmed that the last Ghost was on the way back, having either succeeded in the mission, or failed (the rarer outcome). Jazz himself had only been back long enough to do the klepto-lottery. This time, the big-ticket item to “auction” off had been some Decepticon’s stash of porn vids; the rest had been tools and wires and circuits and other parts that had gone to keeping the Ghosts’ manor, such as it was, running. “I got a surprise for you.”

“This anything like your last ‘surprise’? Because that didn’t go so well.” Despite his words, Prowl shut off his optics, the glow of his downright frightening mix of gold optics behind his red detachable infrared visor disappearing.

“Words?”

“So this is a sex thing of some sort.”

“Of course!” Jazz made sure the mocking note in his mock-offended answer was more obvious than usual. “Do I have any other sort of surprises?” Prowl opened his mouth and Jazz hurried to say, “Rhetorical question; don’t answer it. Words.”

“I trust you.” Those weren’t the words Jazz was looking for but they made his spark go fuzzy anyway. “Green. Helium — but things have been so hectic lately we probably have less than a breem, if your surprise has a chance of triggering my glitch.”

“You ain’t glitched,” Jazz answered, but he took note of it anyway. Running so many ops at the same time did leave his lover wrung out and stressed. Jazz’s mission had gone perfectly, at least; he hadn’t even had to call his lover to update him until he risked a comm to say he was coming home. Not all of them had gone so well.

In deference, Jazz used only the lightest touch on his lover’s hand to guide him. His Family gave him knowing looks, scurrying out of the way as he took Prowl to the medbay. Prowl’s doorwings spread automatically when the entered the new room, taking it in. He couldn’t sound-map a space like Jazz could, but he was much more sensitive to temperature and electrical fields. He could tell where they were by the power flowing through the wires of the medical equipment, the new generator, and the electrical system that connected the two.

Jazz grinned when he saw the expression of confusion on his lover’s face. Jazz couldn’t put a number to the temperature difference like Prowl probably could, but even he could feel the jump in heat and humidity as they entered the room. “Did we get a new heater for medbay recently?”

“In a manner of speaking. Stand here.” He danced away to stand next to the barely-disturbed tarp. “Okay. Optics on.”

Prowl did so, and was superbly unimpressed with the sight of Jazz standing next to a piece of broken medical equipment. The bright lamp Jazz had managed to rescue from the Praxan horde and save until now to light up the room to a level more comfortable for Prowl was probably more impressive. Then Jazz flipped the tarp off to reveal the piece of ‘equipment’ beneath. Steam wafted into the air in a sudden burst, and Prowl’s optics went wide as he realized just what his lover had found and managed to set up without him finding out about it.

“A hot tub?”

“Yep!” Jazz giggled maniacally. “Surprise! Come check the temp. Wirestrip assures me it’ll get up to two-twelve but you’re the final judge.”

Battered and dented, the thing didn’t look like anything impressive at all, except it  _ worked _ ; steam curled from the surface of the cleanser. Heat and cleanser… the magic combination. Jazz danced in place as Prowl trailed his fingers through the liquid and his doorwings relaxed. “Jazz,” Prowl’s voice was too soft, too amazed, to truly be scolding, but he tried, “we still don’t have the energy to run this just for me.”

Jazz grinned wider. “Ain’t just for you. Firefly says Streetfire’s new foot’ll finish integrating about 200% faster with a couple’a hot soaks. And Starracer,” their nominal quartermaster, who tracked their communal resources, like generator fuel and energon, “says the increase in morale from giving everyone a chance for a bath more than makes up for the fuel expense.  _ We,” _ Jazz daringly stepped close and wrapped his arms around his lover’s waist, “just get first crack at it. Called in every favor I had to get the room t’ourselves for a few joors even.

“Up for it?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sticky Sexual Interfacing this chapter.

“Are you?” After so long, Prowl did not cede control of their lovemaking easily. And with so little time before they had to get to the main event, Jazz held his ground when Prowl tried to back him up against one of the medbay cots, which drew a possessive engine-growl from his lover’s chest. He did let Prowl draw him into a searing kiss and when Prowl’s hand went to Jazz’s much-neglected spike-cover, and he showed his lover how “up” for it he really was.

But tonight wasn’t about  _ Jazz _ , so he didn’t let Prowl dominate for long. Jazz squirmed free, and with a wicked grin leapt up on the edge of the tub, balancing precariously. The lip of the tub was a little wider than one of his feet, and flat, but slippery. Perfect.

“Jazz!”

“Yes love?” He grinned down at his mate, whose chevron was even with Jazz’s feet. On the other side of the tub’s lip, the cleanser would break a mech’s fall before he’d done more than fall. The interior of the tub was big enough for three mechs Prowl’s size — four Jazz’s, or seven if they were real friendly — so the distance around the edge wasn’t that large.

“Get down from there before you fall!”

Jazz dipped his foot in the steaming cleanser as he balanced-walked along the edge. He shivered at the heat; in the past he’d said he wouldn’t be caught dead in one of Prowl’s boiling baths, but it was the first  _ heated  _ **_bath_ ** he was going to have in a  _ very _ long time. It felt divine. This was going to  _ be _ divine.

He threw a saucy grin and flickered his EM field challengingly. “Make me.”

Prowl’s optics darted between Jazz and the surface of the hot tub a few times, while he calculated just what his mate could possibly have planned, before more cautiously climbing up after him.

Here, balanced on the edge of falling, Jazz definitely had the advantage and he used it. Prowl made a grab for him; Jazz danced away, then returned for a kiss. Prowl wobbled, and Jazz caught him. He broke the kiss and wiggled away before Prowl could tighten his hold and actually  _ hold _ Jazz. “So close!”

Prowl watched him as he stalked the edge of the pool. Jazz could feel Prowl consider giving into the inevitable, and just diving into the cleanser to make his next grab for his all-too-agile mate. Jazz laughed and swayed temptingly, running his hands over his hips and over his spike, groaning louder than he’d intended as he did so. Would Prowl give into that temptation or not? 

Apparently not. Prowl inched his way along the edge, on his hands and knees, using his feet to brace on either side of the lege to help hold him up. He wasn’t going to  _ lose _ by falling in first! He was going to grab his slippery lover and  _ drag _ him back to the cot!

Jazz swayed. Nope. Nope Nope. No way was anyone gonna catch the Jazzmeister!

Their EM fields snapped together. Sparks flew, hissing and popping as they hit the cleanser and extinguished. Frag, this felt good already.

Jazz “snuck” up on his lover from behind, and leapt away, almost losing his balance and falling when Prowl whirled with surprising agility to make a grab. They  _ both _ ended up clinging to the edge with hands and legs both, holding themselves up while they laughed. 

“Sneaky mech,” Jazz scolded over the too-loud  _ burr _ of their fans, the aroused roar of their engines, the  _ fizzle-pop! _ of the sparks. “Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky…”

“I… Learned from the best,” Prowl panted back. “Want you.”  _ Primus! _ Jazz groaned with not-sudden  _ want. _ “Want you.”

_ Want you too! _ But Jazz grinned as he stood and stalked around the edge of the tub again. “Gotta catch me.”

Prowl was still struggling for balance, aft in the air, when Jazz came up behind him again. “Gotta catch me…” he repeated, “Or,” and he reached out to gently run his finger over Prowl’s valve-cover. “Or gotta let me catch you.”

Another growl of Prowl’s engine trailed off into a needy whine. Jazz helped his lover stay up as the valve-cover snapped open to reveal just how ready for this his lover really was. 

Beads of lubricant clung to the subtle biolights that lined the mesh. Reverently Jazz extended his claws and ran them through the wetness, tweaking each of the nine little lights he could see with the barely-there touch of the claw-tips.

Prowl cried out and clung tighter to the precarious edge of the hot tub. Jazz steadied him, though his own balance was chancy enough that it wouldn’t take much to send them both tumbling into the cleanser. 

“Shhh… “ Jazz soothed. “Just breathe with me.” He gathered his lover closer to him, used their combined weight to steady them, then did it again. Prowl cried out again, almost sobbing over and over  _ pleasepleasepleaseplease… _ Jazz smiled. Prowl lost all coherency once he was aroused enough. Hence the safewords. “Gimme a word.”

“Helium!”

Good. Jazz retracted his claws and wiggled one finger into his lover…

Prowl  _ screamed, _ his field flaring with  _ Yes!-Pleasure!-Want! _

Out of the periphery of his vision he saw Firefly start to run in, responding to the sound before slamming to a stop as he hit the edge of Prowl’s EM field. Jazz looked up and grinned at the medic, who just shook his head and retreated.

“Come on,” Jazz crooned encouragement. “Just hang on. You can do that, can’t you?”

In response Prowl gripped the edge tighter, and Jazz braced them against each other, keeping them from falling off the edge, either into the cleanser or to a hard landing on the med-area floor. Then he wiggled his finger, pressing against sensors and loosening the calipers. 

“So tight,” Jazz whispered as Prowl moaned. It had really been too long for Prowl. For  _ both _ of them. “Gotta relax, lover.” 

Prowl had no answer to that, except to gasp as Jazz hit one specific sensor cluster and his calipers loosened enough for Jazz to add a second finger, gently stretching.

Jazz didn’t like rushing this part, but he was keenly aware that at any moment Prowl’s glitch would reassert itself and turn this to pure agony. Less than a breem, Prowl had said earlier. A few handfuls of kliks of play and the promise of a bath didn’t change that. “Word.”

“Helium,” and as though the safeword had opened up a dam, more words started tumbling from his lover’s vocalizer. “Jazz! Jazz! Primus! Please, I want… I want… Jazz! Please! Pleasepleasepleaseplease… Jazz! I want!”

“And you’re gonna get,” Jazz assured. “Me. All’a me. Gonna give you  _ everything.” _

Prowl started to respond but a third finger in his valve cut that off as he wailed. Sparks gathered, flickering under his armor. Jazz wanted to trace their pathways, from wire to circuit and back, but he needed his other hand to hold them up. It was all he could do not to grind against his lover, but Prowl was grinding enough for both of them. 

Jazz was debating if Prowl was ready for a fourth finger when, among the litany of moans and begging for  _ moremoremoremoremore, Jazz, Primus, I  _ **_need,_ ** Prowl gasped out “Neon!” and made the decision of what to do for him.

Carefully Jazz slid into the cleanser, groaning himself as he was enveloped in  _ hot _ and  _ wet. _

“Come on, lover, can let go now. I got you.” Jazz guided Prowl down into the cleanser with him — Prowl screamed again — and onto his spike. Prowl was still so  _ tight _ as he clamped down on Jazz, but it was so  _ perfect! _

Their EM fields flared into a synchronous storm of  _ YESYESYESYESYES!  _ Jazz, for one, would have overloaded right then if they hadn’t been in the cleanser, grounding and draining away much of the excess electricity.

Prowl clung to Jazz, arms, legs, and field wrapped all around Jazz, surrounding him, sobbing as he started to ride Jazz, frantically chasing overload through the grounding effect of the cleanser. Jazz growled. No. He pushed Prowl’s back up against the side of the tub, pinning him, holding him, and stilling his thrusts. Jazz had not done all this for it to be over that quickly.

“Jazz!”

“Not that easy. Have you now and I ain’t gonna make it that easy.” Jazz kissed his way up his lover’s neck cables to whisper in his audio. “Gonna touch you all over. Gonna kiss every bit’a you.”

Prowl howled his approval of this idea.

His  _ body _ wasn’t quite in agreement it seemed. He wiggled, squirmed, trying to get some  _ friction, _ but Jazz held him down, didn’t give him the space to find it. All he had was the  _ fullness _ of Jazz inside him. Prowl  _ squeezed _ again and again, trying to turn that into the stimulation he needed. Jazz’s fans  _ burred _ higher, some of them frothing the cleanser.  _ Frag Primus on a pogo stick _ , that felt good, and it was all he could do not to start thrusting himself. 

But overload would bring an end to this, and Jazz wasn’t ready to give it up yet. 

Their bodies molded so tightly together they might have been welded by Prowl’s arms and legs around his lover, Jazz began  _ touching. _

He kissed and nibbled Prowl’s neck cables as the mech moaned, a crescendo of rising and falling sound Jazz played like his sitar. He ran his hands over doorwings, and had to hold them both still, willpower alone keeping back overload while he explored sensitive seams and plates and the places where the armor slid away to expose internals he hadn’t seen more than a handful of times, none of them recent. He chased the sparks that flickered over his lover’s body, from wire to circuit to plating and back, until they  _ fizzle-popped! _ in the cleanser. 

And through it all Prowl clung, desperately, to Jazz. He was almost mindless with pleasure but he wanted  _ more. _ He wanted Jazz to  _ move. _

Jazz didn’t, though it took all his will. His vision started whiting out around the edges from the onslaught of Prowl’s pleasure, but he stayed still and  _ prolonged _ this. 

Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer.  _ Jazz _ needed more. More of his lover’s pleasure. More  _ Prowl. _

He dropped a kiss on his mate’s chest-seam. “Open for me.”

_...yesyesyesYesYesYES! _


	6. Chapter 6

Their chestplates closed. The scents of lightning and singed metal and boiling cleanser filled the air. Overload flickered away. And Jazz collapsed on top of his suddenly limp lover. 

He didn’t stay there. Prowl hadn’t fallen offline, but there was absolutely no sense in his optics, so Jazz made sure he was secure on the hot tub’s seat, then pushed himself away. Jazz knew he had the  _ sappiest _ expression on his own face, but he didn’t care. He had Prowl. Prowl was the most gorgeous creature in existance. And they were in the tub together, he didn’t have to hold it together long enough for Prowl to regain enough sense to stand, because Jazz could do a lot of things, but he couldn’t actually  _ carry _ his mate to the tub. But they were already here, so Jazz could just sit back and enjoy his lover’s slow climb back to sense.

Finally Prowl blinked, focusing on Jazz. 

“Hello, beautiful,” Jazz said softly.

“Hello, Jazz.” 

Jazz just smiled dreamily. Prowl’s answering smile was more reserved, but not by much. 

How long they sat there in the hot cleanser just smiling at each other, Jazz didn’t bother keeping track of. The bath was as good as he’d thought it’d be. 

Prowl broke the spell by lifting his hand out of the cleanser and holding it out to Jazz. 

Jazz took it and let Prowl pull him into full-body contact, their frames leaning against each other in the steaming cleanser. Jazz rumbled his engine in approval. He  _ liked _ cuddling, but it always had to be on Prowl’s terms. That was just a fact. But he wasn’t going to pass it up when Prowl decided he wanted it too.

“Are you alright?” Prowl asked quietly. “If you’re overheating, we can lower the temperature. The glitch has receded now.”

“Ain’t glitched,” Jazz responded automatically. He was overheating, but he really didn’t mind. “First hot bath in nine vorns, it don’t matter how hot it is. I ain’t getting up.”

“Not even to get a washcloth so that I can scrub your plating properly?”

Well in  _ that _ case. Jazz really didn’t want to get out of the tub. But he needed to to reach a bucket of cleaning supplies that had been left nearby. A scrap of mesh, a bundle of steel wool, a bottle of scavenged Autobot soap. Jazz’s own personal addition to the bucket: a squeegee to use on Prowl since he couldn’t use fingers or claws on Prowl’s plating. No polish: that was being hoarded by those cyber-vultures waiting for their turn with the tub who actually cared about putting a shine on their grey plating. He ignored how Prowl took the chance to scrub out his interfacing equipment with his fingers while Jazz’s back was turned. Prowl had lost his body-shyness around Jazz long before the Fall, but there were still a few things that bothered him. Jazz didn’t mind, though Prowl seemed to think, even after all this time, that he did.

Jazz grinned as he held out the squeegee like a weapon. 

Prowl rolled his optics. “I can’t believe you still have that.” 

“S’not like I’ve got a lot of other stuff in my footlocker.” The sound equipment was communal. Weapons were either kept on hand, in subspace, or were communal. He might use more of their explosives and grenades than other Ghosts, but they were communal too. So his footlocker had his sitar, his bedding, his acid-resistant tarp, and this squeegee. It wasn’t the original one he’d had in Praxus, but one of the things netted in that very first raid the Ghosts had made against a Decepticon base.

“You realize I’m an adult-frame and don’t need nearly as much looking-after as you heap on me?” Prowl’s voice was gentle, not waspish, but the retort still stung.

“If you ain’t happy, I ain’t happy, love. And all’a’us don’t have enough happiness for me t’waste any’a’it because you don’t want to need more than the rest’a us.” Carefully he started scrubbing Prowl’s plating. On the flat planes of his armor, Jazz used the spongy side to lather, then scraped it away with rubber edge, leaving behind grey plating gleaming dully. In the seams and corners and tire treads and other places where dirt had collected, Jazz used the squeegee’s edge to pick at it until it came free. All done without engaging in the dreaded  _ petting _ that caused Prowl pain. The squeegee was enough separation between Prowl’s plating and Jazz’s hand, where a simple rag wasn’t. Or something. Jazz didn’t care. This worked.“No one’s gonna begrudge you, love. Not for a squeegee and not for a hot tub we’re all gonna use. But if I didn't make it happen, you’d get rid of them just because you don’t want to be a burden.”

“My glitch does make me a burden.”

“Nix that!” Jazz snapped. “There wouldn’t  _ be _ any Ghosts of Praxus without you. We are one Family,  _ one clan, _ because’a you. Without you, we’d’ve split. Praxans become Autobots, Polys go back to the city t’defend it. But we’re  _ here _ because’a you.”

“It might be better if you weren’t,” Prowl said softly,  _ guilt _ dripping from his field like the dirty cleanser from the squeegee. “Autobots have proper washracks, and if you were in Polyhex you’d be defending your home and family. You’d be with your sire and the others there.”

“At first, maybe,” Jazz didn’t deny this. Life would be more comfortable for all of them if they’d gone their separate ways after the Fall. “But if any’a’us thought this wasn’t worth it, we’d bail. We’re all here for revenge, and sure we’d maybe get that regardless, joining up with the actual militaries, but it wouldn’t be revenge on  _ our _ terms. It’d be on Prime’s. If tomorrow Megatron decides t’start negotiating a ceasefire, agree t’divy up the planet between him and Prime, Prime’d go for it. As Autobots, or even as Polyhexian military, we’d be forced t’accept that.”

Jazz squeegeed the grime from Prowl’s chevron. “It’s freedom, Prowl. That’s your contribution to the Ghosts. The freedom to pursue our justice, our revenge, as we need to, not as Prime thinks we should. That’s worth a squeegee.”

“I’m sure the others don’t feel the same.” Of course it wasn’t the squeegee Prowl was referring to, but every consideration, every ‘privilege’ the Ghosts awarded him to account for the glitch.  _ Everyone _ will enjoy the hot tub, but Prowl was the only one for whom it was on any level a necessity. Prowl needed more space in the cramped quarters, needed more of the Ghosts’ stolen and scavenged bedding, because he couldn’t lean on another for warmth; he needed a squeegee where others could make do with a rag. Needs, needs, needs… That he needed all that was a fact, and that made him, in his mind, a burden to the Ghosts. In truth, no one begrudged him these things, and in fact saw them as truly minor concessions. 

Prowl took the rag and started returning the favor, scrubbing down Jazz’s plating in the much more traditional manner.

“They all do feel the same,” Jazz insisted. Prowl had been insisting this oversensitivity was a burden off and on since they’d first started dating. The crux of this arguments actually predated the Fall and the formation of the Ghosts. It had gotten worse again, after, when the concessions Prowl needed no longer just affected Jazz; Jazz insisted they didn’t mind, but Prowl could never quite believe him. This wasn’t an argument either of them win here and now. It was time for a subject change. He needed to distract Prowl. “‘Sides, I think they all agree it was worth giving us first crack at the tub just to find out how much of a  _ screamer _ you are.”

“Jazz!”


	7. Chapter 7

Those in Iacon who’d met Bluestreak — mostly Autobot relief workers who’d gotten the Praxan refugees settled, before over two-thirds of them decided hiding under the Autobots’ kibble-armor wasn’t for them, and became a guerrilla army — thought he’d be nothing but a liability to the Ghosts of Praxus. Bluestreak did talk. Incessantly. 

But was utterly silent on a mission. So were the rest of them. No flirting now.

He was a good look out and sniper. None of them were amateurs or civilians any longer, but Bluestreak was best sniper in the Ghosts. Just what this mission needed.

Clickit-clickit-clickity-tap.

It could have been comm-static, caused by solar flares or other interference, but it wasn’t. It was the Family claw-tap code, adopted by the Ghosts. It was one of those things about how the Ghosts operated that gave Soundwave fits. It was (comparatively) easy to recognize the channels on which Jazz and Prowl flirted with each other, but breaking those encryptions rarely led to actual disruption of the Ghosts’ plans. Because there was always the  _ one _ time it would, the Ghosts generated and changed out their encryptions whenever they could. But when they needed to actually communicate while setting up an ambush, and couldn’t afford  _ any _ risk of their communications being intercepted and translated, the Ghosts used the tap-code.

The code was secret, not taught to mechs outside of Slink’s sparkline. Even a spy who managed to get hired on, get adopted, or marry into a Family probably wouldn’t be taught the claw-tap code unless they managed to join a smuggling crew. Not happening. Especially now that the Families had closed ranks around Polyhex, and a spy would have issues joining the criminal caste in the first place. It was used by smugglers to communicate in the tunnels were voices were distorted, and commlines were blocked by the heavy metals of the walls. 

Even being taught the code wouldn't necessarily help decode those Ghost communications that used it. It had to be altered significantly to be transmitted via their commsuites. Unless someone had — like Jazz — been taught to recognize the pattern from the time he was a first-frame sparkling, it really did sound like static. And translations had never been terribly specific.

The one Bluestreak had sent could mean “incoming police raid” or “Primus-damnit, there are foreign smugglers in my secret storage spot!” or anything in between. It meant  _ non-Family presence. _ Which, really, could mean anything. 

What it meant  _ here _ and  _ now _ was that the raiders’ four-orn long wait was over. Bluestreak had spotted their target. He didn’t add any modifiers to the short burst of clicks, so it was on its expected route, and there were no surprises he could see. One megamile out, just leaving the canyon before the plains the Ghosts hid on. Nine escorts — all tanks or seekers — just like Prowl’s info had said there would be. Perfect.

The response Jazz sent back — clickity-clickit — was best translated as a simple,  _ I hear you. _

The Decepticons weren’t the only ones who’d become more sophisticated since the Ghosts’ early raids. The Decepticons couldn’t find the tunnels the Ghosts used, but any spy in Polyhex could find out they existed. Everyone there knew the Families used a network of secret tunnels. That’s why Soundwave had changed the routes of their convoys so that they passed over no caverns or open spaces in Cybertron’s surface. In response the Ghosts had started using more traditional ambush points, like canyons and mountains and crystal forests. The convoys couldn't avoid both, so they’d increased security on those areas. Became more alert, cautious, and hair-trigger.

The Ghosts were upping the ante again. The escorts should be relaxing now that they had left the canyon, feeling safe, sure that the chance of a Ghost attack was over for this stretch of the route.

Better yet, the Decepticons had timed their exit from the canyon to sunset. They’d hurried to get through the canyon while they still had daylight on their side. Now that they were on the mostly-featureless plains, they felt safer in the darkness. 

Jazz let a fierce grin overtake his features, showing his teeth, as he felt the vibrations of the coming convoy overwhelm his senses.  _ Their mistake. _ Ghosts’ scrap-pile camouflage domes were hardly sophisticated. Some of the Ghosts did have Cybertronian Intelligence Agency manufactured stealth systems — highly illegal! But they were  _ criminal caste; _ laws were more like inconvenient suggestions than actual restrictions. Those with the CIA systems hid closest to the convoy’s path, where there was the greatest danger of being detected. Others hid further away, under their own scrap-disguises.  _ No dark place on Cybertron was safe from the nightmares you made. _ Tonight the Ghosts were going to prove it.

As far as the Decepticons were concerned, the Ghosts were  _ always _ out there, planning an attack. Prowl called it psychological warfare. Forcing the enemy to wear themselves down with precautions all the time, while the Ghosts themselves only needed to deal with those precautions when they were actually there.

Click!

_ Go! _ Not a traditional signal, but a new Ghost addition to the syllabary. It was the last thing transmitted before a powerful jamming field descended over the area.

With a war-cry, Jazz flipped over the camo-shell, slamming it into the nearest seeker with all his strength. The mech squawked, his thrusters spinning up on instinct, then stalled out with the impact. Jazz didn’t give him a chance to recover. He lunged and drove his energon sword through the mech’s chest, then sliced sideways. The mech fell in a spray of fluids, and Jazz finished him with a shot through the processor. 

War-cries and screams and blaster fire filled the night. Jazz let out another call of his own and leaped up onto the giant convoy-transport. Another still-confused seeker confronted him there. Jazz’s speakers blasted through the night, adding to the noise. The seeker flinched and fell, unable to tell up from down… Fell right to the mercies of the waiting Ghosts below. Jazz barely saw A-Sharp stab the unfortunate seeker though the spark.

Nine disorientated Decepticons versus fourteen Ghosts.

The war-cries were turning to victory-cheers as Jazz set himself to hacking the huge cargo-hauler’s autopilot. 

It lumbered on, and in his peripheral vision he saw that the Ghosts were transforming and falling into an escort formation around the still Decepticon-controlled hauler. Breems ticked by under the roar of engines.

Finally Jazz broke through and brought the thing to a stop. Skyfight didn’t even wait for Jazz to open the loader doors and broke the lock. The Ghosts cheered.

Enough energon and generator fuel to keep the Ghosts alive for a vorn. Enough weapons, ammo and explosives to keep the Ghosts in business for twice that long. Decepticons did love their weapons. Jazz grinned again. Even better, this particular shipment was headed to the Iacon front. Its loss would hopefully allow the Autobots to push back there. What was that saying… When you’re low on everything but the enemy, you’re  _ in combat. _

Jazz cackled. 

Skyflight, Hellstorm, and Railshot — military-framed helicopter alts — all released the cargo pods they carried folded up in their subspace. The close-quarters fighters were all Praxan and Polyhexian cars who had no cargo-carrying capacity beyond their subspace. 

They looked to Jazz. 

“Everything that ain’t nailed down,” he ordered, more a matter of tradition than a true command. They all knew what they were supposed to do.

The next six breems were a frenzy of subspacing everything they could, then loading everything else into the three cargo-pods for the helos to carry. Jazz loaded up his subspace and started wiring the one explosive he’d brought with him to the autopilot. No more IEDs made from whatever was on-hand — at least not for this mission anyway — Jazz had brought this one with him special for this. The hauler was late, and would be arriving without its escorts. It was unlikely in the extreme the Decepticons at the front would actually let it into their forward base outside Iacon. It was worth a shot though. Whether they let it in or not… BIG BOOM. 

_ Jazz was here. _


	8. Chapter 8

The thrill of victory faded a bit while they made the journey back to the manor, but it picked up again as they spotted the familiar tunnels and subterranean landmarks that said they were almost there. He’d long ago let Prowl know they were alright and their mission was a success, but now he opened up a com-line to let him know they were almost back —

_ “Ping!” _ Prowl’s voice broadcast openly, a single transmission powerful enough to echo around Cybertron.

By itself meaningless, deliberately so, it nevertheless sent ice through Jazz’s lines. 

“What are we going to do?” Bluestreak asked Jazz, panicked. They were  _ so _ close to home… 

“Skyflight, Hellstorm, Railshot,” Jazz called over his own comsuite. These three were military frames — even if they’d all been criminal caste since they’d been sparked — and were the ones who’d give him the most trouble over these orders. “Fall back. You’re overburdened and if we’re bugging out of the manor, we’ll need what you’re carrying at th’new manor. Rest’a you, with me.”

“Jazz—!”

“No objections, Hellstorm,” Jazz snapped. “You won’t be fighting on the ground anyway — Prowl’d have you lifting supplies down to the evac tunnel.” Helicopters’ powerful lift allowed them to carry a lot of weight, but they couldn't fly down the thinnest tunnels any more than a seeker could, so the helos became cargo elevators during a bug out. “Get the frag out of here.”

Hellstorm didn’t acknowledge, but Skyflight confirmed that all three of them were vectoring off and heading to the new manor. 

The rest of Jazz’s team pulled up next to him. The cavern was still quiet, but he could feel the tension in their EM fields as they drew in close. “Fliphawk,” Jazz said, “you’re injured. Follow the helos. Icelight, with him. Don’t get caught.” 

“Yes, Sire.” Icelight responded. Fliphawk looked mulish, but obeyed.

Then Jazz opened up a commline to Prowl. “Sending m’injured and cargo t’the new manor now. Got nine of us close enough t’help. Where do you want us?”

“Topside,” Prowl snapped back, tension and relief and worry making his words sharp. “We have three incoming personnel transports. If you can blow even one of them, it’ll buy us time.”

“Roger roger.”

To say Jazz was not good at planning would be a lie. Jazz had been trained to be his sparker’s heir. That meant logistics, organization, convincing people to work for him — all of that came as naturally as his sparkbeat. Combat tactics — not as much.

His standard plan for similar situations seemed like a good place to start: blow it all up.

“Who’s got the grenades?”

Jazz raced out onto the open plain around the old Autobot base, zigzagging toward the Decepticon transports. They opened fire and he sped up, dodging the blaster bolts. Somewhere off to the side a missile exploded, having lost its target lock on him as soon as it launched. Gotta love the illegal stealth systems. He opened an unsecured commline just so the Decepticons could hear his maniacal laugh.

Decepticons — the undisciplined clods — popped out of their transports to partake in shooting at the infamous Jazz. 

Jazz turned the volume up to eleven and blasted his speakers and he  _ didn’t _ hear the resultant screams over the onslaught of weaponized sound.

_ Something _ landed on him hard enough to slam his back bumper into the ground and put a sudden break on his headlong rush through the transports’ formation. With a summersault, Jazz transformed and threw his attacker through the air. 

It flipped to land lightly on four legs. Ravage.

The cat snarled and Jazz grinned. “Here, kitty-kitty.”

Enraged Ravage pounced at him again. Jazz caught her, twirled through a dance-step, and threw her again.

Ravage picked herself back up off the ground. Shook herself.

“Sticky grenade,” Jazz warned, before turning tail and driving for the nearest bit of cover. Ravage yowled in outrage and Jazz didn’t see if the cassette managed to get rid of the magnetically attractive explosive before it blew up.

“Jazz: will surrender.”

Jazz faced Soundwave. He could feel the maniacal sparkle in his own visor, his face stretched in an excited grin. “You know that ain’t happening.”

“Safety: guaranteed.” Soundwave insisted. Soundwave might even have been telling the truth about that. Rumor was he didn’t need to torture a mech to pull everything he knew out of his head. He had his gun trained on the slippery saboteur. Blue plating gleamed in the light. Jazz knew better than to assume that there was  _ no _ emotion lurking in that red visor: Prowl got the same way. Jazz ran hot in combat; Prowl, cold. But there wasn’t anything in Soundwave’s visor he allowed Jazz to see. “Jazz: will not be harmed. Jazz: will surrender.”

“I’d say, ‘You won’t take me alive, copper’, but the copper caught me a long time ago,” Jazz snarked back. He and the Decepticon’s Intelligence Commander were the center of attention. “So instead I’ll say what you already know: you can’t capture a ghost. We’re already dead.”

Jazz did another dance-step, ending up two places further away from the Decepticon. “Also, give Megatron my regards.” Which was Bluestreak’s signal.

Everything exploded. Jazz laughed amid the screams of Decepticons.


	9. Chapter 9

It took Jazz nine orns to be certain he’d lost the last cassette in his breakneck cross-country trek. He finally lost Laserbeak by driving into the Autobot defensive perimeter around Iacon. He escaped down the nearest tunnel while the Autobots shot at her. She would be a prized kill for any Autobot sharp shooter; Jazz was only a grey shadow that not all of them even  _ wanted _ to shoot.

Only then did he head for the new manor.

Of course he was recognized within a second of showing himself. “Welcome back t’the manor! Jazz!” Snowflake, their little Praxan thief, called out with an enthusiasm that belied her age — she was older than Jazz and Prowl put together. “Everyone! Jazz is back!”

This time, the Ghosts didn’t really crowd him, though he was still mobbed. They stayed far enough away to allow him to keep trudging tiredly towards the narrow tunnel between their new medbay and communal storage where he hoped to find his foot locker and his blankets. He needed recharge.

“We were worried,” Bluestreak said. “You were so close to the transport when we blew it up — but you were right. The ‘Cons were so busy watching you and Soundwave face off that they didn’t even notice when they drove right over the crate of grenades. It was a pretty awesome explosion. But then, when it died down, we couldn’t find you.”

“Prowl and Rico could tell you I was alive,” Jazz said, though not unkindly. It went without saying that if he’d been captured, he  _ wouldn’t _ be alive. The way the Ghosts operated gave Soundwave fits. The tunnels were secret. The Ghosts were so close-knit that infiltration wasn’t an option. Of those outside their group, they only interacted with their smuggling contacts in Iacon and Polyhex — people they’d carefully vetted, known by sight. They changed their encryptions for comm-chatter so often that by the time Soundwave broke one, it was outdated. The click-code was all but indistinguishable from static, and if he did eventually manage to torture a few translations from a captured Family member from Polyhex, they were utterly useless, because everyone had slightly different ideas of what they meant in plain Cybertronian. What the  _ frag _ did  _ “I’m in prison and the warden’s an idiot” _ even  _ mean _ in the context of one guerrilla signalling to another? 

It let a very small number of mechs do an incredible amount of damage.

Of course, given the way they operated, the capture and interrogation of even one Ghost would be disastrous. Which is why Ghosts didn’t get captured…  _ alive. _ They moved heaven and earth to keep each other from being captured, but there wasn’t a single one of them who wouldn’t blow themselves back to Primus and laugh while doing so, if that was the last thing the Ghost could contribute to the fight, to avenge their lost home, and to protect their  _ family _ .

Prime didn’t approve. He’d rather the mechs be alive to rescue or trade. 

Prime could suck Jazz’s exhaust port, he thought tiredly. The Autobots were very good at holding territory. Prime was going to be the one to hold Cybertron; the Ghosts were going to be the ones who allowed him to take it.

“We were still worried,” Bluestreak insisted, and everyone agreed. 

“M’fine now. Rico and his beau back yet?” He called loudly. He already knew. His bond to Ricochet might be the weaker of the two, but the loss of Praxus and the formation of the Ghosts had gone a long way towards strengthening it again. Through it he already knew why his brother wasn’t out here greeting him.

_ “He’s not my beau!” - “I’m not his beau!” _ came the simultaneous shouts from somewhere down a small side tunnel.

“I can  _ feel _ y’fragging, Rico!” Jazz yelled back. He didn’t stay to hear Ricochet’s usual tirade on the difference between nice, no-strings sex and having a beau.  _ Which he didn’t have. _

Instead Jazz finished his trek to their new makeshift medbay, where Prowl was talking something over with Firefly. The exhaustion faded with a surge of  _ love/relief _ at the sight of him.

Prowl stopped as he felt Jazz’s reaction through the bond. He could feel how much Jazz wanted to hug him, and answered that desire with his own and an arm outstretched in invitation. “Welcome back, love.”

“Gonna frag you into the wall,” Jazz responded, with a surge of  _ desire _ that sent the newly installed heat-lights flickering.

Prowl just responded with a wave of  _ sorrow _ and  _ apology. _

Jazz’s  _ desire _ stuttered to a halt. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Prowl lied. “How about I frag you instead?”

With the dildo, he meant. Which — “Wha-why?” Jazz didn’t wait for an answer. He tore himself from his bondmate’s embrace to search the medbay for what he  _ knew _ should be there.  _ The hot tub was missing! _ “Where is it!”

“We couldn’t drain it fast enough to take it when we evacuated.” Prowl accompanied his words with a comforting hand on Jazz’s arm. “I did try. For you — for  _ us _ — I did try to bring it with us, but there just wasn’t enough time.”

And now it was buried in the rubble of the old manor. To protect the tunnels, the sacred secret so vital to the Ghosts’ survival, Prowl would have blown the whole system sky high. After luring as many Decepticons as he could down into them first of course.

Jazz just stood there, flexing his claws, trying to come to terms with this loss. It seemed so minor, but it loomed large in his spark. They’d only been able to use it  _ once — _

“You’ll find another,” Prowl assured. 

Would he? It was just luck he’d found the first one.

He didn’t realize he’d said that out loud until Prowl answered. “You will. You will find one, or you will steal it.” He paused just long enough to take the sting out of the next word. “Criminal.”

“Cop,” Jazz responded automatically. 

“Your cop.” Prowl wrapped his arms fully around Jazz and Jazz savored it, even as his spark ached for the circumstance. “Until then, what we have is more than enough.”

The lie felt bitter between them.

This time, Jazz wasn’t going to pretend. “No it ain’t.”

“It is not,” Prowl acknowledged. “But it’s all we have. And I have faith in you.”

.

.

.

_ Strength to endure, comes out of despair _

_ Where there is love, there is life _

_ And where there is life, there is hope _

— Crüxshadows,  [ _ “Defender” _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce3JOp3HQfY)

.

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End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote! For now, at least. Scavenger hunt time! Did you find all the nines?


End file.
